


Ordinary

by stravaganza



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Childhood, M/M, Minor Angst, Possibly OOC, Psychological Trauma, Self-Esteem Issues, minor fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-29
Updated: 2012-08-29
Packaged: 2017-11-13 03:25:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stravaganza/pseuds/stravaganza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everybody thinks Sherlock is a genius; he really is not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ordinary

The endless sound of screeching violins echoed throughout Sherlock’s head, the ear-bleeding notes bouncing about aimlessly, pulsing painfully against his temples. Too much thinking always lead him to this.

Sherlock groaned in pain as he pressed the warm damp cloth against his forehead, eyes closed in the forced darkness of his living room. Quiet, silence, peace. That’s what he needed, and what he couldn’t have because of the sounds plaguing his mind.

He didn’t want that, he had never asked for that. He never even asked to be born, not just to be mistreated by his parents, and yet there he was, roaming the Earth like the strange creature he had become. A man forced to be a genius, when he really wasn’t.

The sound of a door opening, a voice rising above the noises.

“Sherlock,” it called, and the violins quieted immediately.

“John,” was the hopeless call back, one hand stretched out to reach him. “John, I need you.”

Probably Sherlock’s voice was so close to a whimper that it moved John enough to convince him to hold out his own hand in response, feeling cold fingers clasping around its back and wrist. The hand was brought to Sherlock’s mouth, where his lips kissed the palm adoringly before pressing it against the cloth over his forehead.

John lifted his other hand to brush his temples gently. “You okay?”

“No,” Sherlock croaked out tiredly. “Migraine.”

The doctor said nothing more and kept caressing Sherlock’s head with careful, surgeon fingers.

Sherlock remembered how the violins started, and when. He remembered a room full of dust, so deeply buried in his family’s mansion and so far away from the living quarters that everybody seemed to have forgotten about it. Once he fell asleep there and went missing until he woke up. Not that anybody had looked for him. He remembered the nights spent between these walls, mice and spiders hiding from the devilish sounds coming from the instrument held between too small fingers.

Mycroft had been able to play fluently since he was four or five, perhaps, and Sherlock was seven already. His violin didn’t sound any better than a cat ran over by a truck, though, and he kept playing secretly every time he could, wanting to be perfect. Or at least decent. Sherlock played hard and long, so much that his fingers bled and his every sleeping hour was filled with the terrible sound of his agonizing violin, which was enough to keep him awake even after he learned to play fairly well.

It wasn’t until he was twenty that the insomnia they caused went away, substituted by the blissful cotton-like world the drugs offered him. He couldn’t always afford morphine, but that was alright. Except for when he happened to have intolerable migraines, because that was when the violins resurfaced.

Then there was the school and the terrible marks he brought home; the whispers and the scolding, the grimaces and disappointed looks on his parents’ faces. The hours spent studying and crying because he wasn’t enough, he wasn’t Mycroft, and Maths really just wasn’t his thing.

Eventually he had learned, waking up at night with nightmares filled with books and numbers. He often dreamt that everyone around him had morphed into a number, everyone except him, the only person still unable to understand the meaning of these senseless scribbles, left alone. But of course he understood the utility of that. It became better when he discovered Chemistry and Physics. These had a goal, these were useful. He could handle them. He could handle the bullying that came along in high school.

Of course, it wasn’t that easy. Not when Mycroft was going to be a politician, and him? What was he going to do? Would he live in his parents' estate, on their status and of their money? They wouldn’t let him. He would need a stable job, but what could a junkie like him do, _the pirate_? He was good at nothing except sticking his nose in other people’s business.

There the idea, a job, The job. His job. Consulting detective. Only children invent their job, a sharp female voice said within his head. Sherlock willed it away and pressed John’s fingers harder against his brow after removing the cloth, squeezing his eyes shut.

Sherlock was sure he could do it, he was good at understanding other people, he had a good enough intuition sense to get things right, and with some practice he would improve his deductive skills. There had to be a method, he thought, and he would find it on his own if necessary.

College was hell. His marks were only sufficient enough so his parents decided to send him somewhere prestigious, like it was decent for one of his status, and Sherlock still wondered if that was just to save their faces. Eton, while the other children he went to school with went to other universities or didn’t go at all. Sherlock there was confronted with others, so many others as smart as his brother, and he was nothing among them. His only cleverish quality was his ‘magic trick’, which left him even more alone.

Always too focused on his studies, on new ways to please his parents to make friends, always too afraid of disappointing them too to try and approach others, children first and adults then. Always alone, in the end, apart from the few shallow acquaintances. He was so lucky his parents had died before he had met John, or they would have made Sherlock feel so completely useless that he would have chased John away.

Now, now that they went away and his brother was free to try and help him – not that he would ever accept his offer, of course –, he too was free to do what he liked. And now everyone called him genius and thought of him so, and he didn’t want to deny it, to disappoint them too.

“Sherlock?”

He found out he was rambling when he opened his eyes and saw the outline of John’s face in the darkened room, but he had no idea what he was saying. He only knew he shouldn’t be saying that at all.

“You’re not what?” he was being asked.

“A genius,” was the exhausted confession, and he closed his eyes again, pressing the fingers of John’s hand against his cheek this time, enjoying the way the simple contact with John brought slight peace to his spent mind.

Even if he hadn’t closed his eyes, he wouldn’t have seen the fond smile on the other man’s face.

“You must be really in a lot of pain. You usually are everything but modest,” he said.

Sherlock tried to shake his head, yelping at the high buzz of strings in his head. “You don’t understand...”

“You are the most clever man in the world,” John interrupted him. “I’m sure not even your brother or Moriarty are like you. I...”

“Please, John.”

“Sherlock, your brain is amazing, really.”

“I’m not...” he tried again, weakly.

“It’s alright, Sherlock. You should rest now, so you’ll feel better.”

Sherlock felt vaguely daft thumbs brush his cheeks to wipe away the tears leaking from his closed eyelashes.

“John, I’m not a genius, I’m ordinary like you, it was all an act, I was pretending, I’m not...”

He gasped when he felt a kiss being pressed against his forehead. The violins exploded into shreds and fell silent.

“It’s alright, Sherlock. I love you even if you’re so much better than me.” The confession came so quietly and naturally that he almost didn’t register it.

“No one could be that clever,” Sherlock managed to babble, before he started to sob at John’s reply.

“You could.”

John embraced him and tried to soothe his pain, smiling at the small words he managed to understand between all the incoherent noises.

“I... you... so much... love...”

***

It wasn’t a week before these words were repeated.

Three sounds were haunting Sherlock’s mind at that moment; Moriarty’s laugh, a gunshot, and a sentence.

“You are ordinary, Sherlock.” Ordinary, ordinary, ordinary... Why was he the only one to understand that?

Sherlock was pretty sure he was standing on a rooftop at that time, but the memory had become pretty fuzzy with the drugs currently pumped through his veins and the distance in time and space, far away from then and there. He knew John’s voice was there, though. Some words spoken, some not, he wasn’t really sure.

“It was a trick. Just a magic trick,” he had said that, yes. Though that wasn’t true. And he said something else, too. “No one could be that clever.”

He wondered if John had gave up the belief that he was a genius, together with the one that he was a hero, when he saw what happened next. He wondered why John insisted in thinking so high of him, but then he understood: he didn’t think he was a genius.

Because then John had answered, without hesitation: “You could”. John believed in him, not in his genius, but he hadn’t grasped the words meaning until later, too much later.

Instead Sherlock had smiled, and said the wrong thing. “Goodbye” when he really was thinking “I love you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Will extend this some other day with more detailed stories from Sherlock's childhood, because I have had the idea swelling in my mind for a while, and although I like it this is all I got from it for now. Or I could get a whole other story prequeling this, longer, with everything explainer better.
> 
> Please, consider buying me a coffee on [my ko-fi page](http://ko-fi.com/stravaganza)! I'd really appreciate your support!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Ordinary - Book Cover](https://archiveofourown.org/works/499209) by [stravaganza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stravaganza/pseuds/stravaganza)




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